Woods Wanderer

I’m pleased to announce that The Laws of Nature: Excerpts from the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson is back in print. I reprinted selections from Thoreau’s journal, A Natural Wisdom, last fall. Here’s the other book I put together sampling my two favorite nature writers of the 19th century.

When Emerson published his slender volume Nature in 1836, he set in motion Transcendentalism – a uniquely American literary movement deeply rooted in the natural world. Henry David Thoreau was part of that movement. The poet Walt Whitman, along with John Muir, John Burroughs and most other American nature writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, were influenced directly or indirectly by it. Excerpts from that book have been reprinted here, along with selections from Emerson’s journals and other nature-related writings.

After having this book published by Heron Dance then North Atlantic Books, it feels good to see it as a Wood Thrush Books title again. This time I have included a Sources section that shows exactly where I found each of Emerson’s insights. Let there be no doubt that these are his words verbatim.

While comparing Emerson and Thoreau is like comparing apples and oranges, I must admit that I find Emerson to be the deeper thinker. Perhaps that is why I gravitate to his work time and again. He has been written off as a quaint Yankee philosopher of yesteryear, I think, but when he wrote about the natural world, he spoke to all of us who see the divine in it.

Like most of what I’ve published, this book is available at both Amazon.com and the Wood Thrush Books website. Check it out.

Tags: natural philosophy, nature, nature writing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Transcendentalism

Last May I went to Concord, Massachusetts to complete my research for a collection of 19th century American nature writing. It is my conviction that it all began with the publication in 1836 of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s little book, Nature. Similar ideas were put forth at the same time or shortly thereafter by a handful of Unitarian ministers and other free-thinking writers known collectively as the Transcendentalists – Henry David Thoreau among them, of course. Concord was ground zero for that movement.

Since then I have put together a book of various excerpts, essays, journal entries and poems from that era, along with an introduction that I’ve written. TRANSCENDENTAL NATURE: An Anthology of 19th Century American Writing on the Divine in the Natural World is now in print. The subtitle is a lengthy one, but it best describes what this book is all about. It is the ineffable quality of Nature that has moved thinkers and writers from Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, and Thoreau, to Walt Whitman, John Muir, and John Burroughs, to many of us living, writing, and grooving on the wild today. And yes, I think there is a distinctly American quality to this shared worldview.

At any rate, this book is now available at Amazon.com. It can also be purchased at my website, woodthrushbooks.com. Check it out.

Tags: anthology, divine nature, nature writing, Transcendentalism